Paris פריז
The capital where the yeshiva rose twice and where in 1242 the Talmud was burned.
Jewish Paris is two ascents and two breaks. In 1182 King Philip expelled the Jews from the royal domain; sixteen years later he called them back, and the returning community was gathered again by Rabbi Yehuda ben Yitzchak—Sir Leon—who opened a yeshiva with the Dampierre training. From it came Rabbi Yechiel of Paris and Rabbi Yitzchak, the future Or Zarua.
In 1239 the convert Nicholas Donin laid before the pope a list of charges against the Talmud, and a disputation was staged in Paris: four rabbis headed by Rabbi Yechiel answered before the royal court. The sentence was passed on the book. In 1242, on the Place de Grève, some twenty cartloads of manuscripts were burned—by the reckoning of contemporaries, thousands of volumes.
Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, then a student in Paris, wrote of it the kinah Shaali Serufah, recited on the Ninth of Av to this day. The community held on another century: the expulsion of 1306, a return, and the final expulsion from France in 1394.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- The kinah Shaali Serufah of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg — an eyewitness testimony to the burning of the books
- The record of Rabbi Yechiel's Paris disputation — the course of the disputation and the charges against the Talmud
Basis: documents and evidence.